


outlaw love (makes you lose control)

by tamquamm



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Kavinsky POV, M/M, The Dream Thieves - Freeform, Unrequited/One-sided
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:07:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24317797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tamquamm/pseuds/tamquamm
Summary: Joseph Kavinsky dreams of Ronan Lynch.It’s not ideal, okay. It’s completely less than ideal. But he can’t get the fucker out of his head, and the things that his head wants will always somehow manage to crawl into his dreams.Ronan Lynch will crawl into his dreams.In the best ones, anyway. Other times he just walks.
Relationships: Joseph Kavinsky/Ronan Lynch (onesided)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 39





	outlaw love (makes you lose control)

**Author's Note:**

> I have a lot of complicated thoughts and feelings when it comes to Joseph Kavinsky and instead of getting all academic about it, this wrote itself instead ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

Joseph Kavinksy dreams. 

When he pops a little pill, it’s with purpose. In with a plan, out with his prize; easy. But even the greatest of thieves, the most masterful and well-practiced of all, can’t help the wandering sometimes. Your own head? That’s a powerful little motherfucker, even Kavinsky will give it that. Some things are inevitable, some things just can’t be helped. So of course this is one of those things, of course. 

Joseph Kavinsky dreams of Ronan Lynch.

It’s not ideal, okay. It’s completely _less_ than ideal. But he can’t get the fucker out of his head, and the things that his head wants will always somehow manage to crawl into his dreams. Ronan Lynch will crawl into his dreams.

In the best ones, anyway. Other times he just walks. 

The thing is, Kavinsky gets what he wants. Anything he wants, anything he can dream of (quite literally), can be at his fingertips easier than easy. He wants for nothing, not really, and the things he does want for are rare. It’s almost thrilling, when he finds something he _can_ want for, wholeheartedly, something just out of his reach, that makes him give chase. Something that won’t just appear when he calls for it.

Some _one._

Maybe that’s why his subconscious clings to Ronan, the idea of Ronan. Desperately grasps at him, a boy made of straws, slipping between K’s sad, trying fingers. They’re just out of practice, that’s all, forgetting what it’s like to want and grip and grip and grip for it. 

It’s different, it’s almost novel.

It’s fucking thrilling, is what it is. 

So maybe Joseph Kavinsky dreams of Ronan Lynch. So maybe he indulges.

~

The wristbands are just a taste of what he really wants.

Kavinsky knows he could do it, if he wanted to. He could do it easy enough, has had more than enough practice to get it right. A perfect forgery, an identical copy. He’s done it twice, looks right into the eyes of one every day. Pats his head, bosses him around with a curt little _Hey Proko_ like it’s magic words or some shit. He could pull Ronan out, too, if he really wanted to.

He doesn’t want to.

It’s not what he wants, he doesn’t want a copy, he doesn’t want a plaything. Not in that sense, anyway. He wants knife-cut grins and icy fire in cruel cobalt eyes. He wants the push back, the challenge of it, the game. It could be programmed, sure, but it would never be the same. And K would know it, always, deep down. That a dreamt up Ronan would only be a piece of K himself, wrapped up a little bit prettier than usual. 

Kavinsky is sick of looking at pieces of himself.

So he doesn’t take his dreamt-up Ronan out, he doesn’t bring him back. He tries to memorize the feel of his skin, the heat of his soul, pressed against the palms of his own hands. Tries to hold on to that without holding onto Ronan himself.

So the wristbands come with instead, perfect copies. K doesn’t want to consider how they came out identical, and what that means in terms of time spent studying the real ones. How many glances he must’ve stolen to get them _this_ right. He doesn’t want to consider it, doesn’t _dare_ consider it.

He thinks about keeping them for himself, just for a split second. He could stow them away in his nightstand drawer, next to the other things he’d use for a little fun time at night. He could hold them in his hands, his physical here-and-now hands, and pretend for a little bit. For however many nights he wants to. He wouldn’t have to dream it, wouldn’t have to tread so fucking carefully in the cargoload of his dreams. 

But that doesn’t feel right, doesn’t feel like the most productive use of such a gift. It _means_ something, even Kavinsky sees it, plain as day. They’re not meant for him to keep, they serve a greater purpose.

It’s easy to track Ronan down, he’s pretty simple when it comes to who he rolls with. His friends are pretty simple with their identifiers, their habits. Henrietta is pretty simple in that it isn’t huge, and Dick Gansey’s dumb ride isn’t easy to miss. He barely spares the waitress a glance before marching straight up to the very object of his realest dreams, the motherfucker himself.

He doesn’t wait around to see how Ronan reacts. 

Call it self-preservation, if you want. Kavinsky lets himself pretend that he still has some.

~

Sometimes Kavinsky doesn’t even dream of Ronan, not really. Not in full, not in a way that he can take back with him. It’s probably a safeguard, a little scrape up of the few defenses he has left to spare. He dreams of glimpses of his skin, just the few inches of muscle he can get his fingers on, just a little bit at a time. 

Rations, if you will.

In all honesty, K doesn’t try as hard to stop it anymore. He doesn’t actively try to dream of something else, not in his wandering dreams, anyway. He doesn’t try to push the thoughts of Ronan away, doesn’t try to clear his head of him before, during, or after.

He doesn’t try to lie to himself anymore. 

It’s a treat to himself, just a taste, earned indulgence for being so fucking good, otherwise. So fucking good, with all things considered. He doesn’t necessarily deserve this, the allowance of it, hasn’t done anything at all to earn it. But he hasn’t done anything to deny this from himself, either. Nothing yet, anyway. 

So he lets himself play pretend in his dreams, so very fucking carefully and yet entirely too dangerous all at the same time. He savors every touch, every feeling, that he can manage, tucking it away somewhere safe. 

He wonders if this is what it’d really be like to touch Ronan, or if this is just some kind of idealized, self-made fantasy. A fucked up, too-real, self-punishing kind of wet dream. If the real Ronan could compare. Or perhaps the other way around; if the real Ronan transcends anything that he could ever dream of. 

K supposes that he may never know, and he’ll just have to accept that.

~

The IDs. 

Kavinsky knows, somewhere deep down, that it’s probably a giant red flag, an unignorable stop sign. A warning of a point of no return. It’s a scolding that he’s getting much too close to the sun, already beginning to drip his meltings all over the last dregs of control he still has.

It’s a slip up, a stupid one. But it’s reminder that he’s still human, he still _wants,_ he still--

This can’t go on.

The IDs happen, not because Kavinsky wants them to. Not because he means to, as funny as it is. He’ll take the credit, sure, but he knows they weren’t on purpose. They happen because Ronan Lynch won’t leave his fucking head. 

They’re useless, aged up inappropriately. More than enough to provide nothing but nuisance. It makes it a punchline, it makes it hilarious, it makes it one hell of a prank. Not that Lynch needs them, or any fake ID, because he clearly manages just fine already. So it’s not like he can rationalize it into a real taunt, anything of malice. Just a stupid, dumbass little prank. And that’s fine, it’s fine.

But they weren’t _meant_ to be a prank.

Here’s the funny thing about the unconscious mind, dreamer or not: it takes the things that you try and try not to think about, thinks about them even harder, and manifests them in the worst possible ways, just to piss you off. And for someone who’s practiced and practiced and practiced, -- worked their fucking _ass off_ \-- to grab and yank the reigns of their somnial beasts, to gain the entirety of control and nothing less, well. It feels like failure.

 _Should_ feel like failure, anyway.

But Kavinsky heaves when he wakes, air knocked right the fuck out of him like it hasn’t been in a long, long time. And it makes him feel something he hasn’t felt in exactly the same amount of time. It makes him feel alive.

There’s stupid IDs fucking everywhere. He doesn’t have to look at ‘em up close, but he picks one up and studies it, anyway. He pauses on the birth date, breath catching. The dream, wild with a course of its own, is still fresh in his head. 

Ronan Lynch, living long enough to match the age on the plastic. Living a full life, a fulfilling life, maybe even a satisfying life. Living.

And a small part of him, the part of him that still dreams like someone ought to -- full of hopes and wishes -- pictures himself right there with him. Existing in that. Existing in someone’s living.

Kavinsky swallows. Reminds himself that people like him don’t do that. Live fast, he reminds himself without anything to follow, just. Live fast.

He drops the IDs at Gansey’s shit palace like you ought to for a prank. Maybe if he does it, he’ll be able to convince himself that that’s really all it was.

It doesn’t work.

~

Kavinsky was right.

Ronan’s hands on him -- the real hands, from the real Ronan -- are more than anything he’s ever scraped together in his pathetic little pity dreams. They’re rough with him, purposeful without hesitation. The _power_ in them, the _assurance._

K’s used to bringing shit from dreams into the world, but for the first time he thinks of doing the reverse. He commits the feel of them to memory, wants so badly to bring this back with him when he’s alone in his head. Alone with the dreamy pieces of a fragmented Ronan Lynch.

It’s kind of fucked up, though, even K briefly acknowledges just how fucked up it is. The fact that Ronan is about to beat the shit out of him on the hood of his own damn car and all he can think about is depositing this into his checking account at Bank of Wank, address: his own bitch of a head.

He takes one deep breath, one last observance of the feeling of Ronan against him, ignoring the aggression. Or maybe welcoming it, it’s hard to tell when he’s been rewired, long since fucked up like this. Whatever, point is, he takes what he wants from this in yet another stolen, mislabeled moment. And then he puts on his game face.

Kavinsky toys with Ronan and Dicky as much as he pleases, as much as they’ll let him. They toy with him back, try to at least. He doesn’t have fuck all to do with breaking into Gansey’s gilded shithole. What would’ve been in it for him? He dropped the IDs in a lie to himself, not that anyone else knows that, but it’s pissing him off that they don’t _get_ that, and that he can’t just say it. He doesn’t stay pissed for long, though, not when the fun stuff starts to kick in, starts to high gear it straight through his veins. This is fun, Ronan is here to play with him, this is _fun._

It’s a little hazy, kinda like the way it is when he dreams, dreams of Ronan. How fucking fitting. 

He watches them go, once they stop looking back. Another stolen glance, stolen moment, stolen reference to commit into his memories to fuel the shit that runs through his head at night. Ronan goes home with Literal Dick and Kavinsky can only watch him go.

It’s fine, it’s fine, Kavinsky tells himself it’s fine. He’s got more than enough, more than he deserves out of this. Way more than he deserves.

He dreams of Ronan, that night and the next night and every night. He shouldn’t, but fuck what he should and shouldn’t do. He dreams. He _feels._

~

_see you on the streets_ he texts.

 _see you in my dreams_ he means.

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr](http://tamquamm.tumblr.com/) || [twitter](https://twitter.com/typicaIrockstar)


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